After spending five years yo-yoing between
six states, Dr. Signe Plunkett says she has settled on a personal
theme song – Jimmy Buffet’s “Changes in
Latitude, Changes in Attitude.”

Plunkett completed a nontraditional residency
May 9 after training at the University of Missouri College
of Veterinary Medicine. She must still undergo a three-day
exam in September, publish a paper and submit her case logs.
If all goes well, she will then be board certified in veterinary
emergency and critical care.

When she started down this road it was
with the expectation that she would complete her residency
in three years. However, when her mentor relocated from Texas
A&M to a veterinary school that had no approved program,
Plunkett found herself without anybody to directly supervise
her residency. Refusing to give up her goal of becoming board
certified, she pursued her education by spending time at multiple
veterinary practices in her hometown of Phoenix, Ariz., the
University of California-Davis, Texas A&M, Colorado State
and a Virginia practice that specializes in cardiology. After
another unexpected delay during the past year, she was able
to make Columbia the last stop on her quest.

“Doctors (Tony) Mann and (Marie)
Kerl were kind enough to take me for the final 11 weeks of
the program and let me work with the other residents here,”
she said of the MU CVM faculty who oversaw her studies while
here.

Plunkett earned her DVM in 1985 at Oregon
State University. She has spent the past 22 years in Phoenix,
where she is the director of medicine for Emergency Animal
Clinic, a 24-hour practice that includes four facilities,
20 full-time veterinarians and 85 support staff members. The
260 shareholders, including MU CVM alumnus Dr. Chris Snodgrass,
are planning to expand the booming practice with three more
offices.

Despite already being a seasoned emergency
care veterinarian and the author of the veterinary textbook
Emergency Procedures for the Small Animal Veterinarian, Plunkett
said it was important to her to learn how to do her job even
better.

“I thought, maybe I can make more
of a difference in more people’s lives,” she said.
“My main drive was gaining the additional knowledge
and being able to share that knowledge with others and potentially
run residency programs myself.”

And even though she experienced Missouri’s
particular latitudes during a time of year that required her
to learn to drive in the snow, scrape ice and buy a parka,
Plunkett said she will return to Arizona with nothing but
warm feelings for the Show-Me State.

“What really surprised me was how
nice people are – at the stores, the airports, and at
MU they are so into teaching and helping people. I had a three-week
break in April and I was surprised by how much I really wanted
to come back here.”